Who does a $15 an hour minimum wage help?

Heh heh heh. Riiiiight.

Do you feel a need to prove you're better than others and to have more than others?

huh? What are they completing?

Then they aren't workers. Even a slave receives something for his labor.

 

Do you believe that's an argument? Which university's economic program doesn't include the government's impact on the economy?

No, I feel the need to prove to you that you can take a personal interest in this problem. It's a problem solved at the individual level, not by an imposed mandate on society. If people should pay more, people would. The fact that you haven't solved this problem as an individual, ie employed all the people that require such employment, is indication that it's not a problem you can solve by telling other people what to do.

It was a typo, clearly. Competition. If you think labor is worth more, then you can compete for that labor by paying them more. Labor that is paid too little is an opportunity for an employer, not a limitation. For example, if you think that fast food labor is paid too little, then start a fast food joint that pays the correct amount. Call it correct wage burger. I'll give you that one for free because I want people to be paid the correct amount too. If you are right that employers are not paying enough, you will be successful and you will steal labor from your competitors making them less successful. This is how the problem is solved. Competition raises wages to the correct wage amount just as it lowers wages for the purpose of efficiency.

The basic premise is obviously wrong since neither you, or anyone that believes as you do has built a correct wage burger that has kicked all the other fast food joints butts.

Since that's true I have to conclude that there should be jobs that don't pay an amount defined as a living wage because there absolutely are people that don't work for that purpose. To deny them that purpose is absolutely wrong.

Try being a slave for a bit and get back to me on that.

 

A 15 dollar minimum wage helps couples who both work, but don't have kids, and single adults.

All others need far more than 15 bucks an hour in order to meet the cost of living. A family of 5, living in Indianapolis, with 1 working parent, 1 stay at home parent, and and 3 children, needs the working parent to bring home around $23 per hour to be at a living wage, according to MIT's Living Wage Calculator. It bases it's numbers on the average cost of essentials, such as food, medicine, housing, etc in any given area. Because it's an average, and not a set universal rate, some will be above and some will be below, but it's closer than what a $15 minimum wage would do.

 

I was going to say that myself. In my universe gas was $.299 and minimum wage was $1.00.

 

I think that if the best job you can get is flipping burgers the proof is pretty much in your mirror.

 

That wasn't the argument. You're spinning.

More spinning. No one is telling other people what to do, and this is not a free-for-all. Our problems exist for the collective population and the solution will be a collective solution. Individuals acting independently and creating a pleasant and profitable society has been proven to be a sad myth. To make it seem glorious you must omit many facts and conditions that have created our problems and preserve them.

Or if you are greedy and want more of the pie, when there is an excess of labor (which there most always is in capitalist economies) you can offer less. We now have college-educated engineers and IT people working as baristas in Starbucks.

You're talking the typical textbook idealism that is divorced from reality.

Nope. We see through it and all the pitch. We've lived it and know the truth and we're going to change it to socialism and worker ownership and control.

So slaves weren't provided a roof over their heads and to eat and sleep? Where did they get their food?

 

OK so you can't show those conditions are any different today than 40 years ago. That blows you claim then.

How do you explain college-educated engineers working as baristas in Starbucks?

 

H1b immigrants taking jobs.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are 27 MILLION legal and illegal immigrants in our workforce. That's 16.9 percent of the ENTIRE WORKFORCE. There's NO JUSTIFICATION for that many in our workforce coming out of a severe recession.

Steve

 

That doesn't show @Heartburn is right.

 

No matter what I say, or anyone says, you won't blame the government for the problems. But you COULD TRY and do something about it yourself.

Steve

 

Note what's in bold. Forget that your 27 million number is a hype. Just notice that the government allowed immigrants and you say government isn't to blame for all the workers pushing wages down. Workers didn't make immigration possible.... -or maybe you mean my "problem" is that I refuse to blame government. But if you've been paying attention, I do (maybe you mean I don't blame the right government people). So let's examine your claims...

I understand your position to be that because of immigration, we have an excess of workers creating downward pressure on wages and that is why wages are low and 29-year-old college-educated adults are working in McDonalds and Starbucks, etc.

1) Trump says unemployment is low enough that we are now at "full employment". Normally that exerts an upward pressure on wages.

2) Enough manufacturers have taken production overseas for cheap labor that it's hard to find goods not made in China. This means that even with "full employment" manufacturers still have alternatives that create downward pressure on wages.

3) This "full employment" includes people holding 2 or more part-time jobs with no benefits because there aren't enough full-time job openings available. It also includes McDonald workers and Starbucks baristas who are qualified for much better jobs but can't find them. So this "full employment" is nothing to rave about. And the unemployment numbers of this "full employment" (3.5%) is just the right level to keep wages from changing much.

So your "solution" is to avoid any possibility of workers uniting to fight with a unified force, but instead to maintain separation and encourage individuals to fight as each may choose to fight individually with no coordination or organized force and just "do your own thing" instead. "Divide and conquer".

 

@Fangbeer , I've often wondered whether that is a flower on your head or blood.

 

Poor career choices?

 

I am not against a $15 dollar min wage - but not for private small business and certainly not for servers who make far more than this due to tips.

I worked for years in the service industry (as a waiter) - put myself through school. The paycheck was an afterthought .. just put it into the bank.

In some restaurants you make so much in tips that the waiters pay the restaurant to work there. Even in a breakfast joint the waiters tips far exceed their wage income.

At the place I worked at, the bussers (kids who were still in high school) made as much in tips as they did in wage.

To put this in perspective - we had 2 bussers for 5 servers on the floor. On average I would tip out the bussers 20 Bucks. Each of the other waiters were the same so there was normally - on an average night - 100 bucks split between the bussers for a 5 hour shift = 50 bucks each/5 = $10/hour in tax free tips. This was nearly 3 decades ago.

 

That doesn't make any sense. Try throwing more s**t against that wall.

 

I'm not the one testing the adhesion properties of poop. You and your engineer baristas need to look into real world employment opportunities and if you have an engineering degree in a vibrant field then you are serving lattes by choice.

 

Notes on the video:

“Most employers pay workers as much as they can” This baseless statement is entirely unfounded.

Workers are not paid based on what the market values their labor, based on supply and demand for workers. Not based on what employers can pay. If an employer cannot pay a market wage for the employee, the Employee workers for an employer who can. But if the employee’s market wage is lower than what the Employee can pay, the Employer will pay the employee the market wage, not what he can pay. He’ll take that difference and pocket it with higher profits.

“Razor thin profits” Here the author switch from actual data to what he claims is his own personal experience. Of course, personal experience is not evidence of the economy. He’s clearly trying to create the impression that businesses are operating on a “razor thin profit”, barely getting by. And while that may be true in some case, we also know, by looking at all economic data instead of just one company, that many companies make fat profits while many of their workers get minimum wage pay.

Claimed effects:

1. A lot of people will lose their jobs or take pay cuts. Except that didn’t happen when the MW was raised in 1996-97. To the contrary, millions more got jobs.

2. Businesses will close. Again, didn’t happen in 96-97. To the contrary, the economy was booming.

3. Young people lose entry level job opportunity. Except the MW is except for interns and young workers.

4. Cost of all workers will go up. There may be some spill-over effect. But the fact that bottom level employees get paid more doesn’t mean that top management salaries have to increase.

5. Fewer people will open businesses. Really? Then I guess the dot.com boom in the late 90s never happened because of the MW increase in 96-97.

6. Prices for everything will go up. To an extent, that is true, especially goods that are dependent upon low priced labor. But because low end labor is just one item in the total cost equation, prices will not go up in correlation with the MW increase. In other words, folks getting MW will be better off. Which is the whole idea.

The author says that businesses will pass higher costs to consumers. What? He just said that higher MW will mean fewer workers, lower profits, closing business, etc. Now he’s saying that businesses will pass the costs on in price increases.

If there are price increases, then businesses have more revenues to pay their workers, and profits won’t be squeezed and businesses won’t close.

So which is it? It can’t be both. The fact is, with a national MW, all businesses have to pay employees this wage, and it levels the playing field.

He says that if prices increase, consumers will have less money to spend elsewhere – a drag on the economy. What he (purposefully?) ignores: People getting higher wages will have more money to spend. The ’96-97 MW increase did not drag down the economy in any measurable way. If anything, the contrary was true.

Now, having pointed out all this holes in the author's analysis, I will say that I am not saying that a MW can have no effect. Obviously, at some level, it can. Imagine a $100 MW and you can foresee the problems. At some point, the benefits of a MW can outweigh its benefits.

And I'm not even saying that I think that $15 is a level that we makes sense. But its close. The truth is, MW has not kept up with levels it has been in the past, when adjusting for inflation (much less GDP or wage growth).

For example, in 1960, the author talks about how he was able to get a job, because the MW was only $1 and hour (because apparently a $1 MW was no obstacles to hiring young workers back then.

But when we run that through an inflation calculator, we find that is equivalent to $8.50 an hours in today's dollars. It's not $15, but it is significantly above the current MW of $7.40.

In 1970, the MW was $2. Today's equivalent: $13.20
1980, $3.10 equivalent to about $10.00.
1990, $3.80 equivalent to $7.40
2000, $5.15 equivalent to $7.60
2010, $7.25 equivalent to $8.35
Today: $7.25 equivalent to $7.25.

So what we see is that in real terms, the MW has not kept up with inflation, much less kept up with per capital GDP growth. Especially since the Reagan "trickle down" revolution. Today, in real terms, the MW is lower than it has been at any time in the past 60 years.

So while a $15 rate might be historically high, a rate in the $10-12 range would comport with historical levels. However, if you were to consider per capita GDP or wage growth, the $15 fits in with that trend.

Problem is, the MW rate is raised so infrequently these days (because Republicans are loathe to increase worker's wages and cut profits for owners) that it gets more and more out of whack, and people demand a significant change to make up the difference and protect against future periods of inactivity.

It would make a lot more sense IMO to set a reasonable MW and have it indexed for inflation like virtually everything else in the government.

 

Here's another one relevant to this discussion

 

So the facts and testimonies of people who formerly worked as engineers, IT professionals, accountants, etc. aren't reliable but your ranting is? LOL!!!!

 

I guess they weren't very good engineers, IT professionals, accountants, etc? You say all these losers are serving fancy coffee?

 

The $15.00 is a talking point, and like most talking points is an ineffective look at the issue. Different districts have different costs of living, these municipalities should determine a cost of living wage rather than a federal one.

Eliminating the minimum wage has its own issues. Creating more competition on the labor force is not always bad, but if job markets are shrinking this will cause people to underbid to aquire work forcing wages down, while unlikely reducing the size of economy. This eventually creates a large contraction effecting everyone, but most ruthlessly the working class.

As our system currently subsidizes low wages with the welfare state, paying people less will only exaserbate this problem. Dismantling the welfare state and minimum wage leads to conditions similar to before the great depression, where these contractions were incredibly detrimental to the population.

 

Good points. Conservatives have argued for years that incentivizing people with more money works. It is the whole basis of their "supply side" economic theory -- cut taxes, and that will incentivize people to work harder to make more money and grow the economy.

But they don't follow their own logic when it comes to more money going to poorer working people.

 

I'm not going to pursue this idiocy. Good day.

 

A minimum wage was never intended to provide a stand alone family income.

I don't blame you, it wasn't selling.

 

It sounds like you're saying that you're opposed to prices adjusting to market conditions.